Hindustan Lever set to take its place among India's top three private sector exporters

Siemens' collaboration deal with Bharat Heavy Electrical (BHEL) may have come unstuck but the leading West German electrical and electronic group is striking roots elsewhere and has taken a Tata executive, Freddie A. Mehta, in the board of directors of its Indian company.

Tata and Siemens are involved in a number of industrial and power station contracts outside India-mainly in the Gulf-where Tatas provide erection personnel and Siemens is responsible for plant -and machinery.

Siemens is also active in China and recently signed an agreement with that country on the licensing of technology for the local manufacture of low voltage generators. The generators will be assembled in electrical plants in Shanghai initially from components supplied by Siemens from West Germany.

India's loss is apparently China's gain for there is evidence that like many other internationals, Siemens plans to expand its involvement in China with more such deals.

Asking For More

Mohammed Yunus, the ambitious chairman of the Trade Fair Authority of India (TFAI) seems to be pegging away at a distant goal. His long-term plans are to ensure that something like 50 per cent of the country's foreign trade is transacted solely through the TFAI at international fairs arranged by it here and abroad.

A small commission on all such sales and purchases would ensure for him the wherewithal to realise his much-cherished dream of an India National Centre at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.

While this plan has met with the bureaucratic resistance which he has yet to overcome, Yunus has managed to scale a smaller hurdle. Foreign participants in the trade fair to be held here in November will be able to hawk the consumer items they display but whose import is otherwise banned-provided the items are on the Open General Licence list and are purchased by Indian importers holding such licences.

A special customs office will be set up at Pragati Maidan at the end of the fair to clear such contraband goods against the payment of the usual duties.To Russia With Love

Hindustan Lever is going all sorts of places. With an annual export turnover of over Rs 54 crore, it is fast heading to take its place among the country's top three private sector exporters.

Trade circles feel the multinational will achieve this distinction before the year end. Some 80 per cent of Levers exports are made up of the company's own manufactured goods: soaps, detergents, processed oils and foods, and various chemicals.

But it also serves as an export agency for industrial goods manufactured in the small-scale sector. Recently, it penetrated the iron curtain by bagging a large export order for a popular brand of detergent manufactured in India from the Soviet Union.

A Fall In Coal

King coal has had a chequered reign in India. The country boasts of enormous reserves of coal, sometimes estimated to run into millions of tonnes. Annual production, however, has remained stagnant at around 100 million tonnes.

With the global energy crisis showing no signs of abating, the emphasis on making do and even reverting to the use of coal has increased. Projections of future demand suggest that the country will need to push production to 260 million tonnes by 1990 and 427 million tonnes by the end of the century.

But Sixth Plan targets now finalised reveal that the Planning Commission has had to scale down the target for 1984-85, the end of the Plan period, from 179 million tonnes to 165million tonnes.

This has enabled a corresponding cut in the demand for funds from Rs 3,900 crore to Rs 2,870 crore. Official sources feel that the reduction will not affect the supply position because, by then, pithead stocks of more than a million tonnes will provide a cushion. The rest of the shortfall will be made good with exports of high-grade coal of up to two million tonnes.

Carrot And Stick

Private sector investment should get a boost after the budget if the Government means business. New shares may well be freed from some of the constraints that now operate to emasculate the the capital market.

Finance Ministry officials are beginning to realise that new equity does not attract the public support it often deserves for a whole range of good reasons: long gestation before the investment yields profits; scarcity of basic inputs in India; a lower return in the early years than available from even fixed deposits.

The Sixth Plan document has clearly identified these factors and talks of 'the need for improving the investment climate and broadening the new issue market so as to reduce the dependence on public financial institutions".

But, as always, no official carrot is without its implied stick. The summary of the Plan also darkly hints that the role of the term-lending institutions in promoting certain development objectives "'will need to be more carefully defined."

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